Curriculum Vitae

James Zhan is Director of Investment and Enterprise at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He is the team leader of the annual UNCTAD World Investment Report.

Dr. Zhan has over two decades of national and international experience in the areas of trade, investment, technology, business facilitation and enterprise development, including directing policy research, facilitating international consensus-building and providing technical assistance to governments, parliaments and institutions in over 160 countries.

Dr. Zhan has a PhD in international economics, and was a research fellow at Oxford University. He holds a number of advisory positions with academic institutions, including Cambridge University, Columbia University, Oxford University and the University of Geneva. He is also Global Agenda Council member of the World Economic Forum. He has published extensively on trade and investment-related economic and legal issues. He is a regular speaker at high-level academic, business and policy forums, as well as parliamentary hearings and appears frequently in international media outlets.